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Ways of Narrating Memory: Hannah Arendt's “Eichmann in Jerusalem

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Ways of Narrating Memory: Hannah Arendt's “Eichmann in Jerusalem Ways of Narrating Memory: Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem“ and 184 Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List“ Wolfgang Heuer DOI 10.12957/dep.2012.3545 Ways of Narrating Memory: Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem“ and Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List“1 Wolfgang Heuer2 Abstract It is self-evident that events of the past are bound to places and acting people, they are playing a decisive role for memory and history. Meaning and importance of places and actions in the past depend on their contexts and each change inevitably also changes the meaning of the events itself. I would like to demonstrate some of the consequences of such a change by comparing Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem“ with Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List“ who decontextualized a factual story and thus changed places and acting people. But before doing this, I would like to emphasize the importance which places and acting people play for memory and history with some perhaps unusual remarks. They refer to the official European history and politics which seem to be marked by the absence of places and acting people. Resúmen El cineasta Wim Wenders señaló que la historia tiende a alejarse de sus lugares. Las películas norteamericanas se distinguen por una historia cuyo lugar es permutable en la mayoría de los casos, mientras que las películas europeas están más marcadas por un sentido de lugar, de particularidades regionales y locales. Wenders asignó a este sentido de lugar el rol clave en su trabajo cinematográfico. Para sus películas, los lugares constituyen las fuentes más fuertes de imágenes, ellas escriben la historia, no el autor del guión, para cuyo texto solamente se tiene que buscar cualquier lugar adecuado. Para Wenders los ángeles que se encuentran en todas partes en Berlín fueron las fuentes de inspiración para su película “El cielo sobre Berlín” (1987) y las calaveras en todas partes en Palermo para su película “Palermo Shooting” (2008). Además de los lugares, para Wenders los caracteres de los personajes están igualmente formando historias; son figuras alucinantes, personas que no son meramente marionetas de eventos sino que escriben con sus experiencias historias. Ambos, el sentido de lugar y los caracteres, tienen igualmente una importancia significante para la narración de historias. La Historia ocurre casi siempre como acción humana en ciertos lugares marcados por hombres y mujeres. El alejamiento de estos lugares y la 1 Artigo recebido em 12 de julho e aceito em 30 de julho de 2012. 2 Professor de Ciência Política da Freie Universität, Berlin, Alemanha. Direito e Práxis, vol. 04, n. 01, 2012 Ways of Narrating Memory: Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem“ and Steven 185 Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List“ Wolfgang Heuer narración sin su tiempo específico y su lugar concreto cambian inevitablemente el contenido de la historia. La comparación del libro “Eichmann en Jerusalén” de Hannah Arendt con “La lista de Schindler” de Steven Spielberg nos mostrará como Arendt desarrolló una narrativa específica del contar lo que existe, mientras Spielberg narra la historia (story) de un holocausto sin lugar y atemporal. 1. History without places Currently, a so-called “House of European History“ is being built in Brussels. It is to be opened 100 years after the beginning of WW I in 2014. This project was encouraged in 2007 by the German president of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Pöttering with the following remarks: “I should like to create a locus for history and for the future where the concept of the European idea can continue to grow. I would like to suggest the founding of a ‘House of European History’. It should [be] a place where a memory of European history and the work of European unification is jointly cultivated, and which at the same time is available as a locus for the European identity to go on being shaped by present and future citizens of the European Union.”3 A committee of nine historians, among them two women, from nine countries published a concept of 28 pages.4 The notion of “locus“ and “places“ is misleading. It is only about the house of the history and not about the places in which history took place, and not about the stories which happened. In this paper the main topics are stringed together in 116 numbered paragraphs ranging from the “forms of higher culture ... around the Nile, the Euphrates and the Tigris” to the entry into the European Union of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. As could be suspected, these experts are committed to a vision of history that defines Europe as the 3 Conceptual Basis for a House of European History, paragraph 1 www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/.../dv/.../745721_en.pdf (last visit 23/8/10). 4 The members of the Committee of Experts are: Włodzimierz Borodziej (PL), Professor of Modern History, University of Warsaw, Giorgio Cracco (IT), Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Turin, Michel Dumoulin (BE), Professor of History, Catholic University of Leuven at Louvain-la-Neuve, Hans Walter Hütter (DE), Professor, Chairman of the Foundation for the House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn Marie-Hélène Joly (FR), Chief Curator, Deputy Director of the Remembrance, Heritage and Archives Directorate, Ministry of Defence Matti Klinge (FIN), Emeritus Professor of Nordic History, University of Helsinki Ronald de Leeuw (NL), Professor, retired Director of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam António Reis (PT), Professor of History, New University of Lisbon Mária Schmidt (HU), Director, House of Terror Museum in Budapest Direito e Práxis, vol. 04, n. 01, 2012 Ways of Narrating Memory: Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem“ and Steven 186 Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List“ Wolfgang Heuer exclusive ensemble of Greek, Roman, humanistic, Christian and scientific culture and progress. They did not mention the role which tha Arab culture played for the Renaissance, the expulsion of the Moors in Spain, the Jewish history, the history of anti-semitism, the French Revolution, the importance of social and political movements, or the crimes of colonialism. The latter is only dealt as a matter of political rivalries.5 Neither the civic movements in Eastern Europe are mentioned, with the exception of Solidarnosc, nor the migrations. This fiction of a European History cleansed from its respective places, regions and cultural spaces appears in a void, and this history without visible actors seems to be moved by ghost hand. With this sort of politics of history the involved historians do not only discredit their own reputation and that of the historical science but they also contradict the spirit of plurality and deliberation not only within the community of democratic and federal societies in Europe but also with extra-European societies. And plurality and deliberation dos not only refer to actual debates but also to debates about history. A common European history requires the perception of the whole diversity of different histories, the telling of all the different stories and the assumption of the perspectives of the others. In a very strange way this comprehension of history without places and acting people corresponds to the Euro banknotes. They show bridges passing over nothing and leading to the nothing, windows and fronts without houses, porticos without streets and places, and doors opening to the void. Places without sense, unfit for communication, not-places, desert. The film-maker Wim Wenders indicated that stories tend to detach from their places. American films are characterized by a story whose places are often exchangable while European films, according to Wenders, are distinguished by a stronger sense of place and local and regional characteristics. Wenders assigned this sense of place the key role in his work. For his films, places are the strongest creators of images. They write the story, not the script writers. For their stories only the right place has to be found. For example, for Wenders the angels everywhere to come across in Berlin where the inspiration for his film 5 See paragraph. 44, 47 Direito e Práxis, vol. 04, n. 01, 2012 Ways of Narrating Memory: Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem“ and Steven 187 Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List“ Wolfgang Heuer “Wings of Desire“ while the death’s heads on Palermo inspired him to make the film “Palermo Shooting“. In addition to the places, personalities are equally relevant, exciting persons and their experiences. They are the authors of stories and no mere puppets of events.6 Likewise both, places and personalities are important for the telling of history. History always takes place as human action at certain places which are formed and shaped by humand beings. To withdraw oneself from these places and to tell the history as a history without its specific places and times unavoidably changes its content. The comparison of Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem“ with Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List“ will show, how Arendt developed a narrative of telling, influenced by Herodot’s “to say what is“, while Spielberg does not tell all, he tells the placeless story of a timeless Holocaust. 2. “Eichmann in Jerusalem“ – pictures of a story For Arendt “to say what is“, as she called it,7 is the task of the historian, and she defended this task with her essay “Truth and Politics“ as response to the enduring controvery about her report on the Jerusalem trial. To the factual truth which Arendt did not want to conceal belonged the fact that the trial “offers the most striking insight into the totality of the moral collapse the Nazis caused in respectable European society – not only in Germany but in almost all countries, not only among the persecutors but also among the vicitims.“8 This truth revealing itself during the trial was uncomfortable and critized as mere opinion what often happens in similar cases and as an inappropriate polemic and lack of love of the Jewish people.
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